What Was Actually Under The Hood Of The Monte Carlo In Fast and Furious 3?

While it wasn’t exactly the star of the movie, the premiere Monte Carlo from the opening scene of 2006’s The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift won over a lot of movie-going fans with its classic stock car styling and awesome, throaty exhaust.

The no-frills Chevy, driven by the movie’s star Lucas Black in an intense race through an under-construction subdivision against Home Improvement star Zachery Ty Bryan in his new Viper. Bryan, in the role of the popular preppy jock-type punk, thinks his high-dollar ride is untouchable, especially when he sees what Black, the brooding outcast rolls up in. However, proving once again that the driver mod matters, Black takes the win in a crazy, destructive race that lands him in hot water with his military father who ships him off to Tokyo, where the rest of the movie unfolds.

No other mention of the Monte Carlo is made in this movie or throughout the rest of the franchise, which has grown in budget and blockbuster-ness – did I just invent a new thing? – over the subsequent releases, but many fans still list the car as one of their favorites from the franchise. We dug around and found this video from Edumunds’ YouTube channel that takes a brief look at the Monte to help fans understand just what made the hotrod run so well, and sound so amazing.

Turns out, it’s nothing exotic, which isn’t much of a shock. The car relied on good ol’ American muscle in the form of a 509 cubic inch big block Chevy cranking out 560 horsepower. The stout mill pushes the massive car to 60 mph from a standing start in less than 5 seconds and through the quarter mile at just under 120 MPH.

According to this video, that would make this the fastest movie car ever built at the time, though it seems likely there have been quicker film cars build in the decade since. However, that doesn’t make this Monte Carlo any less badass!